Family Guy - Volume 3

Share.

This set celebrates Family Guy's return to network TV. But were the episodes worth the wait?

By Mike Drucker

Hype. There are few shows that have been hyped with the 18-24 viewing audience more than Family Guy. I remember in high school, shortly after the end of the first three seasons, people forwarding me e-mail petitions aimed at getting Fox to renew the show. I had friends that would obsessively watch first pirated VHS tapes and later the DVDs for hours on end.

And after those DVDs became the second-best selling television series releases in history, and after Cartoon Network's broadcast of Family Guy reruns netted more 18-24 male viewers than Leno or Letterman, rumors abounded that Fox was in talks with MacFarlane for reviving the show.

A little over a year after MacFarlane revealed the show was back in production, Family Guy returned to TV. Fox heavily advertised the return and the first episode of the fourth season featured multiple references thanking the fans in their persistence in keeping the series alive.

But with a bigger budget and higher expectations, do the new episodes collected in Family Guy: Volume 3 live up to their predecessors?

The ShowFamily Guy is a reference-filled show that follows idiot father Peter Griffin (Seth MacFarlane, who brilliantly voices most of the male characters in the show) and his marginally smarter family and friends. Imagine if someone's entire idea of their world was based on what they've seen in television and movies, and that would be Peter Griffin. Therefore most of the situations Peter finds himself in are hilarious take-offs of situations found in pop-culture. Of course, the real world and Peter's fantasy land are far, far apart, ergo the humor of the show. Thrown among the situations are hilarious asides whose jokes are so fast that you'll miss them if you blink.

The set features the first thirteen episodes of the fourth season:

Disc 1:

North by North Quahog

Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High

Blind Ambition

Don't Make Me Over

Disc 2:

The Cleveland-Lorette Quagmire

Petarded

Brian the Bachelor

8 Simple Rules for Buying my Teenage Daughter

Disc 3

Breaking Out is Hard to Do

Model Misbehavior

Peter's Got Woods

Perfect Castaway

Jungle Love

To be honest, the first few episodes don't live up to the previous three seasons. While they're funny, the jokes are often predictable and, worse, there is way too much self-referencing. The first episode, "North by North Quahog" is almost frustrating in its pure adherence to repeating old jokes. The greased-up deaf guy bit was funny maybe once - but there are definitely diminishing returns when he's mentioned every other episode. Another example is the long fight with the chicken in "Blind Ambition;" it was funny once before but borderline tiring here. While some fans might enjoy the returning jokes and self-referencing characters, it really comes off as a lazy way to get a rise out of viewers.

The show isn't ruined by lazy humor - the Star Wars ending of one of the early episodes remains one of my favorite jokes in the series - but this set doesn't really get back up to speed until around the fourth episode, when Meg becomes good-looking. At that point, we get some amazingly creative humor. It's almost like MacFarlane and gang decided they had thanked their fans enough and could return to what made the show successful in the first place.

The humor remains deliciously offensive, such as a hilarious discussion between Cleveland and Joe in which they place racial symbolism to the sport of bowling. The show retains its wonderfully tasteless references and great non-sequitor asides that originally made the show stand out. Furthermore, the fourth season seems to have had a larger budget, which provided for more diverse episodes that allowed the show's creators to have multiple scenes and complexly animated sequences.

Something to also consider is that Family Guy: Volume 3 has only about two-thirds of the fourth season. While this is somewhat understandable - the run of the fourth season was shown in two halves - it still makes this set feel the most incomplete of any Family Guy release so far. This set runs at a measly 292 minutes. That's 200 less minutes of show than Volume 2's 495 minutes and nearly half of Volume 1's 624. Fox seemed to care more about pushing this set out the door in time for the holiday season over waiting for a more complete collection of the fourth season's episodes.

But by no means is Family Guy: Volume 3 a rip-off. Even if they're not all gems, the majority of the episodes here are classic. And fans will be pleased to know that many of the jokes which were cut from television broadcast are restored here. Add in the best special features of any Family Guy release yet and you've got a set well-worth owning for fans.